you know when you're minding your own
business swimming in a lake or ocean and
suddenly that green blob touches yet
you're not down that stuff could power
your house your car and it could even
stop global warming
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hey there muckrakers thanks for watching
dnews I'm trace algae is plural it
encompasses a large number of stemless
rootless leafless usually mono cellular
plants that get energy from
photosynthesis algae exists in many
colors red yellow purple brown black and
of course green and blue green
all of these absorb light and turn it
into energy algae are a basic food
source for both salt and freshwater
animals and birds their decomposition
releases minerals into the water and
their mass provides a refuge for small
fish and invertebrates
if nature loves it so much why don't
humans it's a completely renewable
source and it's and it's made from
sunlight and carbon dioxide and water
and so it's a very sustainable renewable
fuel that's Dave hazel Beck founder of
global algae innovations he thinks these
tiny plants can be way more valuable
than they are already
Steve woods is a mechanical engineer and
he works with Dave turning algae into
fuel for cars trucks and airplanes the
ones that we deal with are micro algae
so it's a little single-cell and you
could start with just a single cell and
grow it all the way out and just have a
multiply and everything just growing
plants you just feed them what they need
and you know carbon hydrogen nitrogen
stuff and they just grow and they
multiply like crazy or some dnews
episodes that's a bad thing but for this
you want it to multiply eventually it'll
fill up these pools they call raceways
and Steve will pull them out drain the
water and dry it all out that's actually
really hard by the way the dry algae can
be turned into food for animals or
people but when you do feed them certain
things or stress them in certain ways
they can produce oils and different
things that that are beneficial for like
nutriceuticals or pharmaceutical stuff
and everything so it's kind of cool
there are over 100,000 different types
of algae and they store energy in the
form of oil and the oil can be easily
converted into drop-in fuels which means
it can be converted into gasoline diesel
and jet that can be used
directly in current engines you don't
need any special modifications or
anything to run an algae biofuel the
fuel that we're producing is exactly the
same in terms of performance as gasoline
or diesel or jet renewable diesel
actually performs better than
petroleum-based Diesel's biofuels like
these are energy sources that come from
living matter they stand apart from
fossil fuels which by the way also come
from living matter because biofuels are
made now not over millions of years
you've probably heard of ethanol a fuel
made from corn it's easy to make with
the industry we already have but it's
not the best biofuel it takes a lot of
time to grow a whole field of corn but
to go out a lot of algae is it's a lot
faster and it's just a plant on top of
that the US Department of Energy
believes algae could be ten or a hundred
times more productive than other bio
energies biofuels aren't new Henry
Ford's model-t was designed to run on
ethanol but ethanol only packs about
half the punch of gasoline as people
recognize the issues with global warming
and climate change biofuel technology
has only gotten better fossil fuels
release carbon that was trapped inside
of our planet for millions of years but
because biofuels our plants keep
capturing the carbon dioxide and so it's
not being released and that's part of it
you can grow algae 40 times more algae
per acre than you can with terrestrial
crops and as a result you don't have all
the deforestation on top of that these
biofuel farmers only need the oil the
algae can be used for industrial
applications in food and in drugs the
algae even contains omega-3 and omega-6
fatty acids that are required for
healthy humans but difficult to find in
the food chain algae are pretty
incredible little organisms but this
process isn't perfect yet in the past
because it's been very difficult to
remove algae from the water biofuel has
been very expensive though according to
Dave they are now down to only two or
three dollars a gallon to make it though
they still can't make enough to compete
with larger petrol gas companies
hopefully someday in the future algae
raceways like these could replace oil
fields and gas stations will just pump
out biofuel algae could also stop global
warming in its tracks seeker stories got
to actually go to this plant in Hawaii
where the biofuels are made and they
learned how algae plus power plants
equal a healthy
or earth because it offsets their carbon
footprint check it out here and this is
next to a power plant it's unique
because that allows us to capture some
carbon dioxide and avoid that discharge
and reuse it and that prevents it from
going into the atmosphere and causing a
global warming would you put algae in
your tank how about in your mouth I mean
it is a food source after all let us
know in the comments make sure you
subscribe for more dnews and thanks for
watching
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